Page 20 - ELG2404 April Issue 489

IATEFL .

The language melting

pot in a liquid society

As schools become increasingly multicultural, we speak to

Letizia Cinganotto about the multilingual classroom ahead
of her talk at IATEFL.

Q: Letizia, you will be one of the plenary instead I believe we should be encouraging their Languages or an otherwise unrelated
speakers at IATEFL this year. Could you own voice and the use of their L1. language. What methods can teachers
give us a brief sneak peek of what you As part of my research on this topic, use to harness students’ L1 or to help
will be talking about? I observed one school in Dublin already using them acquire the target language?
My talk is titled Teaching English and teaching this sort of model, where switching from one As I touched on briefly before, peer-teaching,
other languages: what’s new?, the primary topic language to another in the classroom is natural. where students act as teachers in their own
of which is the role of English in our developing Children act almost as a teacher themselves right, is one way to approach this.
‘liquid’ society as our world becomes more and when communicating with their peers. It’s a Another way is for teachers to adopt
more multicultural. It is more important than great privilege to talk about my own research translingual practices, such as switching and
ever for a shift in language education, including on an international level at IATEFL. mixing languages in the classroom, which can
a move to the multilingual classroom. be really valuable. Translingual practices can
In the multilingual classroom, English is Q: There are many instances where enhance a natural flow of conversation in
among a melting pot of languages. It’s incredibly the first language spoken at home by different languages within the classroom. This
important to value that melting pot. We often children in class is likely to be either a sort of focus on language awareness is actually
ask students to leave their L1 at home, when related dialect of the standard National recommended in the comprehensive approach

20 April 2024